luca izzo

suspended landscapes*

«Motionless | the frog admires | the wandering of the clouds»**

Yosa Buson

A silent scream invades the soul with waves of light. Sometimes images are like that. Any moments in the life of the universe in which converges the cancellation of it, which opens the door to a deeper understanding of what surrounds us. An instant, it does not matter which. It does not matter if it is really a particular moment that becomes fixed crystallized in the annulment of the idea of duality itself that counterposes man to what a good part of the West defines Created. In an instant the fortifications erected by the cultural superstructures collapse and you can feel part of the Whole.

Part of the landscape, part of the time against which we struggle. We are rocks and water, sand and air. Invaded by silence we perceive the harmony of all the sounds in the world. We dissolve into a laminated sea(***), lost in the stillness of that eternal movement. Landscapes suspended in the gap that suddenly opened showing us the universe. They are moments, fractions of a blink of an eye. Particles of time in which, we attempt to prolong the wonder for the contact with dimensions that seem eternal.

Pierce the veil that envelops the mystery of existence. Stop the flow in which everything runs. Seek refuge in the images, splinters of eternity. The perpetual motion of the waves also annihilates the tinge of silk, illuminated by new lights and perspectives. What openings, what discoveries await us? In the stillness the motion in the universe is revealed. That makes us transparent shadows on the world stage. Man, the centre of himself. Man who feels enormous. Man... becomes small. An evanescent figurine projected in the silence of a context that does not perceive his centrality.

Synthesis. Essentiality. A search that leads to the truth. That sums it all up in little. In the least as possible. To arrive at the heart of things, to become a unicum with them. To overcome the illusory bulwark of objectivity, which reduces the medium to the mere dimension of an alleged or actual player. The depletion of what is perceived by the eyes is a long process. Mental. Lade with fatigue, of course, but able to bring the consciousness beyond the normal degree of understanding.

It is then, when you reach a higher level that you can see the inaudible. Hear the invisible. The silence and stillness reshape the landscape. Or rather they reveal how a restorer does when removing the crust of time from an old canvas. It is the joy of rediscovering colours that we had never seen. Colours, which have always been there, beneath the patina of the centuries but hidden from our sight. Because yes, the world is right before our eyes, but we must earnestly desire to really see it. The world does not hide. It is we too lazy to want to discover.

The important thing is not to arrive at the end with the regret not to have at least tried.
«If I had gathered the ferns, | I would have returned | the rocks to themselves»(****)

[ Sandro Iovine ]

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(*) - The Suspended Landscapes project by Luca Izzo was selected during the portfolio reviews of Photo Session held in Milan on Saturday, 17^th December, 2016 and organized by The Art Incubator.
(**) - Yosa Buson, in Il grande libro degli haiku curated by Irene Starace, Castelvecchi, Rome, 2005; pp. 214-215. Original text: «行雲を | 見つゝ居直る | 蛙哉» (yukukumo o | mitutsu inaoru | kawazu kana).
(***) - Francesco Biamonti, Le parole la notte, Einaudi, Turin, 2014; p. 17.
(****) - Nakamura Kusatao, op. cit.; pp. 1232-1233. Original text: «蕨折れば | 岩は岩にと | 帰しにけり» (ketsu oreba | iwawa iwani to | nishikeri).